Speaking with an elementary school teacher friend of mine recently, I was somewhat saddened to hear his observations about human computer interaction exhibited by some of our youngest computer users.
He revealed to me that his five and six year-old students, when asked to navigate to a website, enter www.google.com in the address bar of the web browser and then, in the search field below the colorful “Google” logo, enter the url provided. To me, and I suspect many of the readers of this newsletter, that anecdote will make you cringe a little bit. Along the same lines, he said that the children will often click and click again, expecting instantaneous response, without taking note of the loading indicators present within the web browser window’s interface.
As someone who spends much of his time instructing users on how to more effectively interact with the technology around them, I come across some common misconceptions and bad habits among users born in the 20th century as well. While I haven’t performed any usability studies, fluency with computer technology is arguably dependent on whether or how early such technology was made available in your lifetime.
This is not to say that a “digital immigrant” could not become more proficient or fluent than a “digital native” but I think you could expect a “digital native” to have less to adapt to (the technological norm that a younger person is born into does provide a certain advantage). The question is whether fluency increases linearly over time or if we have somehow done some disservice to our youngest digital citizens with our personal biases.
Undoubtedly, computer technology has become more and more usable over time. Computers no longer require user assembly. Nor do they require users to write their own software. A combination of hardware, software, and network infrastructure improvements have resulted in a vastly lower barrier of entry than what was present ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, and thus, adoption rates of new technology are much faster than ever before. And it is the job of software developers and interaction designers to invite these new users into a better user experience. Hearing the anecdote from my friend, I believe we can call into question the linear nature of technological fluency as more people become “digital natives.”
First, I think we can look toward software UI/UX design as still having a long way to go toward becoming more discoverable, more opaque, and more “intuitive.” The problem is complex. One could argue that a user’s visiting Google.com in order to navigate anywhere else on the web is not creating a poor experience (ultimately, the user is brought where they want to go, creating a positive reinforcement that is productive in perpetuating the behavior).
However, it reveals a deficiency in one’s mental model of the technology one interacts with. I would argue that while software UI/UX design does have some distance to travel and can succeed in providing more user friendly interaction, the burden does not rest solely on the developers.
While the origin of the quote is not entirely known, many technologists have argued something to the effect of, “The only ‘intuitive’ interface is the nipple. After that, it’s all learned.” This means that it’s up to us to learn about the tools we use in order to become more proficient users. I believe that as computer technology does become more ubiquitous, in order for an individual to maintain an even basic understanding of the environment they inhabit, it will become even more important to become fluent. While the consequences of not being able to distinguish between an advertisement and a search result after submitting a query on Google are small, it’s an unfortunate thing to hear that some of our youngest users are not being taught some basic “web smarts.”
By making technology more usable, we have gotten it into more hands, but we have not created more understanding. So how do we best combat these sort of depressing trends? I believe organizations like Code.org have the right idea — that bringing computer programming to educational environments will provide opportunities for children to gain an understanding of the world around them.
Steve Jobs thought of coding as a liberal art — teaching one how to think. I believe that if we can introduce more people to coding, we can reverse technological ignorance and inspire more creative thinking in our world.